The way we listen to music is rapidly changing. Over just a few years, spatial audio has evolved from an audiophile niche to one of mainstream adoption, and that momentum shows no sign of slowing down.
With the majority of music streaming platforms now supporting spatial music, there has never been a better time for songwriters and producers to get in on the game – and with BandLab’s partnership with Sony, you can.
360 Reality Audio beats are now available on BandLab, putting the power of spatial audio into the hands of every creator. To understand why this is so exciting, let’s take a step back and look at what spatial audio is and what it can bring to your music.
What actually is spatial audio?
The simplest explanation of spatial audio is that it takes everything we love about regular old stereo and explodes it into three dimensions.
Think of a classic stereo mix as a flat picture, with all the sound spread across the left and right sides of the stereo image. By comparison, a spatial audio mix is like the real world – sounds can come from anywhere around you. Instruments can sit above, below, behind, or in front. Sounds can move around, get closer or farther away, or surround the listener to make them feel like they are totally immersed in the audio. A song becomes a whole environment.
Cool, huh? All of this is made possible with cutting edge audio processing technologies that reproduce how we naturally hear depth, distance, and movement. It does mean that a song mixed for spatial audio has to be finalised in a special file format, and this process can take a bit longer than a stereo track.
But here’s the upside: a spatial audio file will work seamlessly across different devices and listening setups. So, whether your fans are playing music on a 7.1 home theatre system, a spatial audio-enabled car stereo system, or a regular pair of earbuds, they’ll be delivered a perfect mix every time.
Starting to sound too ‘techy’? Don’t worry. The very best thing about spatial audio is that you really don’t need to know how the technology works to get started using it.
The benefits of spatial audio
If you’re used to working in stereo, then the first thing you’ll notice after switching to spatial audio is just how much separation there is between each sound. Every instrument in a song gets more room to breathe and stand out.
For example, a spatial mix can make you feel like you’re literally standing in the jam room with a band — drummer and vocalist in the centre, keyboardist off to the left, guitarist to the right, and the bassist filling up the whole space with a low-end groove. Some newer headphones will also track your head movements, so, when you turn your head, the band stays put just like it would in real life.
Of course, there’s also no need to stick to reality. Whole new creative frontiers open up once you move beyond stereo. You want a synth line to spiral around before blasting up through the ceiling? No problem. Harmonies that wrap around your ears like a warm hug? Easy. Adding movement to a song can be intoxicating – so much so that it’s actually easy to overdo it. Once you hit the right balance, however, it can power up a song to a whole new level.
Spatial audio can also be easier to mix. Working in stereo forces you to squash everything down into two channels, and this often means that instruments have to fight one another just to be heard. As producers, we often deal with this by leaning into compression and EQ, and pushing the volume to the max.
In a spatial mix, those limitations are gone. Each instrument has a new level of clarity; compression becomes a creative choice instead of a necessity, and volume levels can be sculpted for a more dynamic and emotionally engaging song.
With all of that good stuff on offer, you might wonder what’s been holding everyone back from joining the spatial audio revolution. The answer is accessibility — and that’s where the BandLab x Sony partnership comes in.
360 Reality Audio beats
BandLab’s 360 Reality Audio beats collection marked the first step into the new era for accessible spatial audio. Powered by 360 Reality Audio, an immersive experience using Sony’s cutting-edge 360 Spatial Sound technology, we’ve now introduced 20 more 360 Reality Audio beats, each featuring a minimum of 10 audio objects to deliver a fully immersive listening experience in a spherical sound field.
Available for free to all members of the BandLab community, these beats take sounds that were once only possible in professional studios and make them accessible to bedroom producers. No pricey hardware needed, no complicated software to learn. With just a smartphone and a pair of headphones, anyone can step into the world of spatial audio.
Ready to try it? Just start a new project, drag and drop 360 Reality Audio beats onto a track and listen to how much bigger, clearer, and more alive your music can sound with spatial audio. And that’s just the start – 360 Reality Audio beats are a fantastic foundation, but it’s when you add your own vocals, melodies, and samples that things get really fun. Before you know it, you’ll have a song big enough to get lost in.
Learn more about 360 Reality Audio here.
About the Author: Clovis McEvoy is an award-winning composer and writer. He is currently an Affiliate Researcher at the University of Greenwich, London, investigating spatial audio and immersive media.
